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The Halo over a Dark Market

In early September of 2008 the stock market was suffering. The real-estate market had hit record lows and foreclosures were hitting record highs. In the midst of all this financial turmoil Halo 3 seemed to shine like a grand beacon of hope over all the financial glum. Halo was speculated to get record setting high sales and the group in charge of their marketing was making sure that they would. The people at Bungie Studios used every advertising technique possible to make this game a record breaker.

Bungie Studios didn't try to keep the interests of Halo 2 aficionados' but rather they targeted the general public. They started with a distinctive Mountain Dew drink that they called Game Fuel. The can had Master Chief, the protagonist of the Halo series, and the Halo brand logo as two imposing figures being the very source of Game Fuel. Even the name of the drink is an implication of how big Bungie Studios was making Halo 3 to be. Halo 3 and Master Chief are the very source of all gamers drive to play video games is what the soft drink Game Fuel was implicating. Bungie Studios even had select 7-Eleven store selling specialty cups advertising Halo 3 in order to keep the public constantly looking and thinking about Halo 3.

To include other marketing strategies used Halo had various trailers to demonstrate the games superior graphics and engaging style. There were real-time cinematics, recorded game play sequences, pre-rendered CGI, and even live action film trailers to announce the arrival of the long time awaited Halo 3. There was also a four series developer documentary made illustrating the difficult technical processes behind creating different parts of the game. An alternate reality game named Iris was released in June 2007 was started on the internet, and its design was to create hype for Halo 3 by releasing background information. In the actual release Bungie hosted various launch parties in the United States and in Europe. The game of course had a lot of hype about it, because its predecessor sold 125,000 million dollars in the first twenty four hours, so many magazines and journals wrote articles on Halo 3 making speculations and adding to the hype.

In a financial period where foreign investors were selling their American stocks and everyone was whispering about recession Halo 3 demonstrated that America still has immense buying power. Bungie was so confident in the injection of comfort that Halo 3 would give to the American market that they had a launch event in front of the NASDQ building in New York. Halo 3 broke the record set by Halo 2 in sales. Halo 3 sold 170,000 million dollars in its first day. Halo 3 has set the bar really high in terms of opening day sales. Halo 3 was awarded TIME magazines best game of the year award for 2007. It is obvious that Bungie Studios took all of the necessary precautions to make sure that their game received a warm welcome, and they succeeded greatly.

By: Dexter Bedd

Dexter Bedd, Legal Marketing

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